Elections: Comrade Aremu Tells Political Class to Emulate Organized Labour

Tunde Akanbi, Ilorin.

On Feb 15, 2023

A Nigerian trade union activist, labour leader and the director general of Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS) in Ilorin, Kwara state, Comrade Issa Aremu, has called on the political class to emulate the Organized Labour in the conduct of free and fair election.

Speaking at a workshop tagged “Road to 2023: Labour and Media Agenda” organized by the Labour Writers Association of Nigeria (LAWAN), Comrade Aremu hailed the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) for the peaceful conduct of the 13th Quadriennel Delegates’ Conference which produced a consensus leadership headed by Comrade Joe Ajeiro, former General Secretary of Electricity Workers’ Union.

He urged the new executive council of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to deepen the existing partnership between the MINILS and NLC in the area of workers’ education.

Aremu observed that with the recent peaceful congress, the NLC has shown that representation was about the workers’ welfare, not just the election of leaders.

He, therefore, charged the politicians to emulate the labour movement and show that 2023 election is about the “contests of policy ideas for national development” rather than “conquest of offices by political gladiators”.

On the present twin crises of currency redesign policy and and lingering fuel scarcity, Comrade Aremu called for understanding, blaming the situation on the insufficiency of democracy in policy formulation and policy implementation in Nigeria.

“It is time to democratize the corporate governance of public regulatory institutions such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for thier efficiency, accountability and service delivery,” he stressed.

While commending the CBN for its globally acknowledged inclusive development financing in rice, textile and cotton production, Comrade Aremu decried what he called “recent top-down Naira redesign policy monologue” that has further created crisis of perception of independence for the CBN and inadvertently undermined the country’s economic recovery, which President Muhammadu Buhari has commendably championed in the past eight years.

‘It is never late to finetune the well intentioned Naira redesign policy,’ said Aremu.

Edited by Amaka E. Nliam